Allie is a real character.

Sometimes, I wonder whether Allie is more spirited, more independent, more strong-willed than Grace was at this age or if I’ve simply forgotten how charismatic and animated Grace was.

I think Grace was bigger, more mature, more a little girl than a baby at 13 months. Was she more verbal? I think she was.

Allie doesn’t talk much. She says a few things, that, this, cat, woah, hey, hi, oh, Dada, Momma. She said Sissy today for the first time. Sometimes, she puts things together like hey cat! but mostly, she still babbles.

Is she less verbal or do I have less time to pay attention to all of her sounds and words?

Allie is a baby. She still wants to be held most of the time. She dislikes her stroller, preferring to be cuddled or to run around on her own feet.

Allie is mischievous, playful, volatile. She throws big fits. Joe thinks she smacked him the other day; I know she pushed Grace today.

She likes to page through books, and she has a few favorite toys that she goes after over and over again. She especially likes Grace’s doll house.

And marbles. Allie can find a stray marble or bead anywhere in the house and pop it into her mouth without being noticed. She rolls it around in her mouth until I notice and ask her what she’s in her mouth. Then she smiles and spits it into my hand.

I don’t even get freaked out anymore because it happens all the time.

Allie makes faces at me. She wrinkles up her nose and laughs a silly growly laugh just like Grace used to, and I love it. She also has an I know I’m doing something I’m not allowed to do. laugh. I love that one, too.

Even though my natural tendency is to compare everything Allie does to everything Grace did, I know she is her own person. She’s unique.

I like her that way.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

Last week, I was down. I felt blue, like I was taking small steps along the path to full-on depression. Between Joe Paterno’s death, work stress, and cyber school stress, I was teary-eyed and sad and having a hard time coping with my life.

Wednesday night, I noticed a big hole in my schedule for Thursday through Sunday.  I also noticed higher than normal temperatures and a lack of winter weather in the forecast.

Sounded to me like the perfect equation for a trip to Old Grandma’s house.

I called her on Wednesday night around 10 o’clock and told her I was thinking about a visit.

The next morning.

After a long pause, she said we should come.

In the morning, I packed some clothes (old ones, the reason for which you will see below) and some diapers and put the children in the car.

And then we were off.

I forgot my regular camera, so you’ll have to see our trip through grainy iPhone photos.

The first night of our trip included clearing out the cabinet under Grandma’s sink.

Grandma just laughed.

Before too long, I took my tired girlies to bed. I hadn’t fully thought through the sleeping arrangements.

Neither of my children will sleep by herself when we’re away from home. Normally, Joe sleeps with one child, and I sleep with the other.

My kids and I went to sleep around 8:30pm. Old Grandma doesn’t go to bed until well after midnight. Asking Old Grandma to sleep with one of my squirmy angels wouldn’t work very well.

So.

The three of us went to sleep in the double bed in the Blue Room.

They inched closer and closer to me, crowding me to the edge of the bed. As I lie there, listening to a pair of squirrels running around in the attic, I realized that I was never, ever going to fall asleep perched there. I got out of bed and went downstairs to watch tv with Grandma. In the dark.

Grandma made up the spare twin bed for me, and I fell asleep for the first time.

And then Allie woke up crying.

Allie’s crying woke up Grace, who became hysterical because I wasn’t in the bed.

I left my soft and warm and spacious bed to join my screaming children. They both cried on and off throughout the night. I guess the squirrels were scaring them. Or something.

When my children woke Grandma up (much earlier than she’d planned, I’m certain), she said, “You didn’t get much sleep, did you?” I think that meant that she didn’t, either.

After breakfast, I put Allie back in bed for a nap. You know it was a rough night when the baby takes a nap at 10 in the morning.

Can you tell how dirty she was? More on that below.

While Allie was asleep, I did my Bible study while Grace and Grandma played Barbies.

We all played Angry Birds and Princess Yahtzee.

When I was a student at Penn State, I drove to visit Old Grandma once or twice a month every month. One of our favorite pastimes was to play Yahtzee. We spent whole days playing Yahtzee together back then. It was really fun to teach Grace how to play the game we love so much.

After Yahtzee, the two of them went back to playing Barbies. I was delighted to have a respite from plastic dolls for a change.

Allie eventually woke up (after a FOUR hour nap – why doesn’t she nap like that at home?!), and she proceeded to run amok.

That’s how the rest of the visit transpired, too. Grace and Grandma playing, and Allie running amok.

She looks like she’s been playing in the coal pile, but she hasn’t been.

Old Grandma’s home is heated by a large coal furnace in the basement. Even at 84, she goes down to the basement every few hours to tend the fire.

There’s a lot of coal dust. It coats everything. It always has, since Grandma moved into that house fifty years ago.

My children looked like coal pile pigs the whole time we were there. I found them irresistibly kissable.

Dirty Allie left nothing unturned at Old Grandma’s. She looked at the photos, the knickknacks, the books, the movies, the rugs, the Purple People Eater – everything.

Looking at this pictures makes me nostalgic. Grandma’s house feels like home. The coal dust, the squirrels in the attic, the flies in the plastic on the windows, it is all familiar, steady, comfortable. I yearn to be back in the pink kitchen or the blue bedroom where I sleep or the green and white bathroom where I bathed the girls.

Oh, to be at Old Grandma’s house again.

I feel like myself at Old Grandma’s. I have no stress (aside from children who run amok and hog up the bed), and life is good.

Even if it is only for a couple of days.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

Santa gave Grace a bottle of pink nail polish for Christmas; it was in her stocking.

The very next day, house full of leftovers and crumpled wrapping paper and shiny new toys, Grace broke out the nail polish.

I must have nodded at just the right moment, talking to the baby or my husband, and she had all the permission she needed to paint her nails.

All by herself.

I was working, eyes glued to my laptop, while she painted. I didn’t notice the painting or the smell of the polish until she was in front of me, showing off her beautiful nails.

“Wow!” I said, eyebrows raised.

I opened my mouth to tell her that she shouldn’t paint her fingers, that nail painting requires careful patience, that I could help her fix them. No sound came out. I shut my mouth again.

She was so proud of her fancy nails. She was especially pleased that she’d done it all by herself.

Instead of helping or stepping in or fixing, I just praised. I told her that I was proud of her, that she is getting to be such a big girl.

There will always be time to correct, but Grace is learning to be independent, to step up and handle things on her own, and she needs to be confident in her ability to try.

Even if she doesn’t handle everything perfectly, I want her to keep trying. I want her to believe she can do anything she wants to do; believing is what makes it true.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

I’ve tried to write about Joe Paterno several times since I learned that he was dying on Saturday afternoon.

I’ve started and stopped four separate times. I wrote about being a tutor for student athletes and encounters on the sidewalk and football games, but each time, my feelings got the best of me.

My words became trite and empty, unable to do justice to the man who was the very heart and soul of my beloved Alma Mater.

Penn State was his heart and soul, too – not Penn State football, but Penn State University.

Through good years and bad, I have always been a faithful Joe Paterno fan. He was a model of integrity, character, and class. He embodied tradition and loyalty.

Joe Paterno was loyal to Penn State for sixty years; we were – and continue to be – loyal to him. It’s a loyalty that those outside the university and its alumni don’t comprehend.

The problem with meaning so much to each other is that people make mistakes.

People get fired.

People die.

We, the Penn State community, are left with big holes in our chests, an empty shell where our hearts used to be.

JoePa has moved on to grace God with his dry humor and Penn State pride.

We’ll all move on, too.

But Penn State will never be the same.

AP photo

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

Today, Grace had to take a fluency assessment. It was the first of two required to finish up her cyber school pre-k curriculum.

Each fluency assessment is made up of five sections in which Grace reads off a series of numbers, letters, colors, or sight words in a 60-second time period.

Even though she normally knows all the letters and their sounds as well as twenty or so sight words, Grace clammed up. I’m not sure if she had some kind of eep! I’m on the spot! amnesia or if she screwed it up on purpose (because she really was being difficult), but the result is the same. Grace read less than half of the letters and exactly two of the sight words.

I was furious, absolutely livid that she would mess it up just to be ornery.

Probably not a helpful emotion, especially since there is a chance that she may not have done it on purpose. Nonetheless.

I decided that we should spend more time working specifically on sight words.

I am not going to use flashcards. I’m not going to drill Grace on the sight words that she’s supposed to know. Flashcards are no fun, and there are better ways to learn.

Like Go Fish.

Honestly, I’m not sure if she’ll play Sight Words Go Fish with me, but I’m going to try. She isn’t so good about playing games and waiting her turn and maybe not winning in the end.

The idea is that she’ll have to read the word on the cards in order to ask for matches and will thus be using her sight words. A lot.

In an effort to give her ownership of our Go Fish game, I let Grace design the cards. She thinks they’re awesome. Hopefully, she still think that after we play Go Fish.

You can download my printable Sight Words Go Fish to use with your kids, too.

Come back and let me know how you like them.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

Every year, I make calendars for my and Joe’s grandparents, parents, and siblings for Christmas.

Every year, I think I’ve made the best calendars yet.

This year was no different.

Maybe it’s because my kids get cuter every year.

I can’t be sure.

I am overwhelmed by cute children.

I have been so blessed.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

It started like any other day.

A teen from our church came over to take care of my girls while I worked with a coaching client.

Around noon, I returned upstairs and made lunch. The girls and I ate together, as we always do.

Allie finished eating before Grace and I, also normal. I extricated Allie from her high chair and let her run around the dining room and kitchen while Grace and I finished eating. This is my every day.

Allie grabbed the hoses running from our turtle’s tank to the canister filter underneath and shook them and sang her own crazy song, also not out of the ordinary.

And then something unexpected happened.

The inch-wide hose that carries gallons of water and turtle poop back and forth from the 75-gallon tank had been attached to the filter by a large plastic nut. It had been attached, right up until it popped right off in Allie’s hand, and a geyser of turtle poop and water erupted eight inches above the filter.

I’m not even kidding. It was at least eight inches high.

I gasped and froze. Grace squealed, Oh, no! MOMMEEEE! and Allie laughed and clapped her hands.

Such is my second-born child.

I remained completely unable to move for an hour, watching the water shoot skyward.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t an hour. It felt like a long time. 5 seconds? 10? 30? It was long enough for a whole lot of water to gushing onto the floor of my dining room.

Finally, I stood up from the table and turned the turtle’s power strip off, expecting the geyser to slow and stop.

It didn’t.

Smaller now, but still gushing two or three inches above the filter, the geyser spewed water up and then down into the broken plastic tub that holds the filter. Time ticked by as the water siphoned itself out of the turtle’s tank and down through the hose into the tub.

I took a deep breath and looked at the mess that was now spilling over the crack in the tub and across the dining room floor.

As I surveyed and strategized, Allie plunged her hands into the tub of turtle water and turtle poop, wear a Cheshire cat grin.

“No Allie! No! Yucky! Yucky, Allie!” I pulled her hands out of the water; she laughed and tried to push them back down into the tub.

Holding her away with my elbow, I tried to pull the two sections of the broken tub together so that the water would stop surging out of the tub and onto the floor.

Once the water had slowed from a tsunami to a river, I tried to stop the geyser. Still holding Allie away, I took the hose from her hand and held it down against the filter nut.

At this point, I was holding the broken tub together with my left hand and holding the hose down with my right hand and holding the baby with my right elbow.

I was stuck. Even the smallest movement would mean that water would again be rushing out of somewhere – either out of the filter or onto the floor or both.

“Gracie? Gracie honey? Can you help me? Go over there and get the step stool and bring it to me.”

Um, okay. Where is it? I don’t see it! I DON’T SEE THE STOOL, MOMMY! I DON’T SEE IT! I CAN’T FIND THE STOOL! She is not good in an emergency.

“Walk into the kitchen.” The kitchen was less than six feet away. “Okay, turn toward the refrigerator. Do you see the stool now?”

I found it! I’m coming, Momma. She carried the step stool over to me.

“Now climb up and look for the great big roll of gray tape on top of the turtle tank.” I had noticed a roll of duct tape there just the day before, and I hoped it was still in the same spot.

I can’t find it! There’s no tape up here! Momma! She started squealing again.

“Look over here, Gracie. No, on this side. Do you see a big roll of gray tape? It’s as big as your head.”

She found the tape and handed it to me. I grabbed it between my knees and pried a piece off with my thumb, still holding the tub with my fingers. After peeling off a piece of tape long enough to hold the two sides of the tub together, I stuck it on and hoped for the best.

“Gracie? Can you help me with one more thing, honey?”

She groaned, over her panic. Now what?

“Can you keep your sister back, away from the poopy water?”

She was happy to oblige, grabbing Allie by the back of her t-shirt and holding on tight as Allie pulled and tugged like a puppy on a leash.

Now that I had one hand and arm free, I pushed the hose down onto the filter and tightened the nut to hold it in place.

Turning my attention back to the broken tub, I tore five or six pieces of duct tape. Starting at the bottom of the crack, I taped and taped and taped in a feeble attempt to hold back the flood from my dining room floor and the two small people sitting on it.

I succeeded in slowing the flood to a steady drip.

Looking around for something – anything – to catch the water still almost flowing out of the tub, I spied the cats’ water fountain.

Feeling guilty for allowing turtle poop to drip into the cats’ water but not knowing what else to do, I pulled the filter out of the tub, hoping that the water level in the tub would be fall below the crack. Holding the big filter and at least fifteen pounds of water, I looked for a place to put it.

The only spot I could reach was next to the turtle tank – where the cats’ place mat was sitting. (The cats’ food stains the floor, so we put a place mat under their bowl.)

“Grace, can you please move the cats’ place mat?”

Their what?

“This, this place mat with the cats on it.”

She moved it, and I sat the filter down. The hard part was finally over. The only thing left to do was pour the water leaking out of the broken tub back into the turtle’s tank, clean the cat’s fountain and the baby’s hands, soak up the water all over the dining room, and sit down.

Oh, and laugh.

When it was finally over, I laughed.

A lot.

Does this stuff happen to anyone else?

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

I used to complain about the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

When I was in high school, I was so above all that country nonsense. It was stupid, and it cramped my interesting teenage life (although I can’t remember just how).

I ignored the Farm Show for many years, ambivalent but not longer inconvenienced.

And then I had kids.

Grace loves animals. She loves county fairs and craft shows and all kinds of festivals. She lives for them.

Grace knows when the Farm Show is happening. We see just enough tv news for her to be aware of the coming events in our community.

She’s been asking harassing me about going for at least two weeks. It didn’t even start until this past Saturday.

I knew I couldn’t manage my clever and inquisitive 4-year-old who is seriously afraid of strangers, my crazy and unafraid 1-year-old who does not yet understand the concept of following directions, and all of our gear including the stroller and diaper bag among throngs of people and farm animals.

And pig poop, which smells much worse than any other kind of poop.

I asked Joe to take an afternoon off and come with us to the Farm Show.

He did.

We spent the entire day today at the Farm Show. We stayed longer than we’ve ever stayed.

We gazed in awe. We met Punxsutawney Phil and fed butterflies.

We learned about long-horned beetles and poisons and frogs and raptors. We asked questions, and we soaked up all the answers.

We admired miniature landscapes and greenhouses. We listened to a pig auction and tried to decipher the auctioneer’s words.

We milked a pretend cow, collecting water in a bucket from real-feeling teets.

We watched chicks hatch and ducklings swim and pigs march off to auction. We did not discuss the ramifications of being purchased by Hatfield Quality Meats.

We pet lots of rabbits and pigs (and a few horses and alpacas and goats and cows).

We played mini golf and Farm Show Detective and bean bag toss. We painted produce and played with animal masks and corn kernels.

We drank milkshakes and ate fried cheese and pulled pork and apples and pizza.

We drove tractors and measured ourselves against their huge wheels.

We laughed at snoozing piggies and carousel rides.

We walked. Oh, how we walked.

By the time we got home, Grace was sleeping, Allie was yelling, and Joe and I had melted into our heated seats, completely unable to get up.

I can’t wait for next year’s Farm Show.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

One day last week, Grace and I sat down to brush her hair.

Hair brushing is not an easy task around here. Grace’s hair was down to the middle of her back, and it is fine and smooth and tangles like Silly String. It’s a real headache.

Literally.

Like all kids, Grace hates having her hair brushed.

We sat down, and I brushed. I sprayed detangler and brushed and sprayed some more.

Fifteen minutes later, we were still brushing. The knots seemed to be multiplying, and Grace’s patience was dissipating.

“Do you want to go to Kids Kutters?” I asked.

Yeah! Let’s go now! she responded.

That was that. I called the kids’ salon, and we got in the car.

Knowing what a mess her hair was, I told her she’d need to have her hair washed before it was cut. She hesitated.

I’d been thinking about getting my hair cut anyway, so I thought quickly and made a deal.

“If you get your hair washed, I’ll get a haircut that matches yours.”

She thought for a second and agreed.

That’s exactly what happened.

She got her hair washed, calmly and without incident. We got matching haircuts.

We both love them, and Grace decorated hers as soon as we got home.

I’ve gone back and forth about how I handled the situation. I don’t like to make deals.

Nothing seems to work to ease Grace’s fears.

Being stern, telling her to lie back and allow the beautician to wash her hair didn’t work. I could just tell that she was going to freeze up or freak out.

Her obedience was less important to her than her fear.

I get it.

I wouldn’t grab a spider, no matter who asked me to do it. I. just. wouldn’t.

I don’t know what to do about her fears. They control her so often.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.

For Grace’s first birthday, I planned a theme. I designed and sent invitations, hung decorations, blew up helium balloons, and made two cakes – one for the party guests and one for Grace.

I left no detail to chance. Elmo the cake was red inside. When I cut the cake, he looked like he was bleeding. It reminded me of the awful armadillo groom’s cake from Steel Magnolias.

The wrapping paper, the plates and cups, the birthday girl’s outfits (both of them), the decorations – everything – had Elmo on it. She even received a few Elmo gifts.

I know because I have photos of her opening every. single. gift.

Grace’s birthday is the week after Memorial Day, so the weather was turning warm. We served lunch, a cookout of hamburgers and hot dogs and several kinds of salad and cheese.

The party was nice.  Everyone who came had fun. Grace got lots of cool and useful and interesting toys.

Allie turned one last week; I didn’t plan a first birthday party for her.

Some time in mid-December, Joe asked when we should have Allie’s first birthday. Since the weekend options were Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, we decided on New Year’s Eve. That was the last time we talked about it.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Joe asked again when we should have Allie’s first birthday. I looked at him blankly.

“I don’t know. When should we have it?” I asked him.

I never did choose, abdicating the decision to the combined brainpower of my sister and Joe. They decided 2 o’clock.

There was no theme. There were no decorations, no balloons, no fancy cakes, no invitations – personalized or otherwise. We didn’t even wrap her birthday present, an awesome cat toy that runs around and says, “Chase me, catch me!” and a bunch of other things.

Because Nana gave Allie a Birthday Girl onesie for Christmas, she wore a special outfit.

We had Christmas with my older sister and niece after Allie’s party, so Grace got presents, too.

And, worst of all, the cake was a miserable failure. I burned it. The frosting melted and fell flat. Lame, lame, lame.

Despite the lack of decorations, lack of invitations, lack of planning and details and perfection, Allie had a marvelous day. She collapsed, exhausted almost an hour before her normal bedtime.

The party was nice.  Everyone who came had fun. Allie got lots of cool and useful and interesting toys (including some that Grace got for her first birthday).

It has taken me a long time – most of a year – to realize that the details don’t matter.

The details are totally irrelevant.

Our life is very different now than it was four years ago. The girls are different. Their parties were different.

I’m not beating myself up over the grand party or the almost non-party.

The results were exactly the same, and that’s all that matters.

© 2012, Feels Like Home Blog™. All rights reserved.